Клубок змей

[tijd]

Роджер Стоун, один из центральных персонажей Рашагейта, провалился в последней попытке обыграть правосудие и, если не получит президентского помилования, отправится в тюрьму на 40 месяцев.

The federal judge overseeing the criminal case against Roger J. Stone Jr. refused on Thursday to grant him a new trial, rejecting the defense’s argument of juror misconduct that President Trump has also repeatedly trumpeted.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington ordered Mr. Stone to surrender to the federal Bureau of Prisons as soon as he is notified to do so. She also released him and his lawyers from a gag order she imposed months ago.
The judge’s decision appears to end one of the most politically fraught federal criminal cases in recent years. In a last-ditch effort to keep their client out of prison, Mr. Stone’s lawyers had claimed that the jury forewoman had improperly concealed a bias against Mr. Stone, justifying a new trial.
The jury convicted Mr. Stone, 67, in November of seven felonies for an attempt to thwart a congressional inquiry that threatened his longtime friend Mr. Trump, and Judge Jackson sentenced him in February to 40 months in prison.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/politics/roger-stone-new-trial-denied.html



Между тем приятель Стоуна и более второстепенный персонаж Майкл Капуто получил высокую должность в администрации Трампа - в качестве пресс-секретаря министерства здравоохранения.

Michael R. Caputo, a longtime Trump loyalist who made a cameo in the Mueller report, has been installed as the public face of the Health and Human Services Department in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’m delighted to have Michael Caputo join our team at @HHSGov as our Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs,” the department’s secretary, Alex M. Azar II, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday with a photograph of the two men already at work together, “especially at this critical time in our nation’s public health history.”
Mr. Caputo, 58, has no background in health care. But what he lacks in expertise, he makes up in loyalty to President Trump, a critical attribute as a superstitious commander in chief has sought to recreate some of the team he assembled four years ago for his stunning upset election victory - and as he has expressed renewed distrust of Mr. Azar.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/politics/michael-caputo-hhs.html


All the President’s Men...President Putin’s...Caputo, Giuliani, Telizhenko. #KremlinAssets pic.twitter.com/tB3bdepNOp
- Alexandra Chalupa (@AlexandraChalup) April 16, 2020

В последнее время Капуто пытался обратить на себя высочайшее внимание суетой вокруг Украиногейта и даже успел выпустить книжку "The Ukraine Hoax: How Decades of Corruption in the Former Soviet Republic Led to Trump's Phony Impeachment".

Источниками дезинформации про то, как Украина боролась против Трампа, для Джулиани и Капуто были два мутных украинца: Андрей Телиженко и Андрей Артеменко. К раскручиванию байки приложили руку многие знакомые правопропагандисты.

After leaving the embassy, Telizhenko opened a political consulting firm called Golden Lion Strategies, incorporated in Canada. He’s since been hired by Pavel Fuks, the Ukrainian oligarch who sought a deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow in 2006 and who brought Giuliani to Ukraine in 2017, as well as Andriy Artemenko, a pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian. <...>
The first original English interview with Telizhenko of the post-Spygate cycle was conducted by former Breitbart journalist Lee Stranahan, who left the hyperpartisan news site in April 2017 to join Russian state-run news site Sputnik News. Stranahan, following his move to Sputnik News in April 2017, told the Atlantic, “I’m on the Russian payroll now, when you work at Sputnik you’re being paid by the Russians. That’s what it is. I don’t have any qualms about it.” <...>
Following Stranahan’s interview, Telizhenko started appearing more frequently in American far-right media. In November 2018, he appeared on the same Infowars radio show episode as Roger Stone. Gateway Pundit wrote multiple stories about him, the first in December 2018 and the second in March this year.
By this spring, Telizhenko had reached a furious pace in tweeting about Ukrainian collusion. “I started reaching out to right-wing media. I also reached out to left-wing media in some cases, but they never replied,” he said. A typical tweet reads: “Also look into DNC Ukraine collusion from Politico article of Jan 2017.”
If Telizhenko was doing outreach to left-wing media, it wasn’t on Twitter. His tweets from that period are exclusively directed at right-wing politicians and influencers. On March 20, Telizhenko tweeted the Gateway Pundit article at far-right activist Jack Posobiec and Donald Trump Jr. The next day, he tweeted at John Solomon, a former opinion writer at the Hill, then at Fox News host Sean Hannity, and then at Solomon again.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/ukraine-whistleblower-politico-story-dnc-telizhenko

Rohrabacher w/ Artemenko-the Ukr politician who met w/ Sater and Cohen and expected his plan to be passed to Flynn https://t.co/vRTNNqRyMK pic.twitter.com/KUteBnCkoY
- Thomas Cleveland (@tcleveland4real) April 4, 2017

Если Телиженко был мелкой сошкой, который пытался раскрутиться через пропаганду, у Артеменко более солидные интересы. Среди его клиентов - Андрей Дергач, а среди партнеров по бизнесу - другой гуляющий на свободе объект расследования Мюллера, Эрик Принс.

Derkach, before a pro-Western uprising toppled Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovuch, was a member of his Russia-aligned Party of Regions. Imprisoned ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort worked for that party, and for Yanukovych.
The filing shows only that Derkach hired a man named Andy Victor Kuchma to lobby for him, along with a second person named Nabil Ahmad Bader.
But “Andy Victor Kuchma” is actually Artemenko's legal name, he told POLITICO. He said he legally changed his name to Andy Victor Kuchma in 2017; his wife’s last name is Kuchma, he said, and the new name is easier for Americans to understand. (Despite that, he still went by Andrii Artemenko when he appeared in a OAN episode about the Biden family a few months ago.)
Artemenko drew attention early in the Trump administration when the New York Times reported that he had shared with Michael Cohen -- then Trump’s personal lawyer, now in prison -- a plan for peace between Ukraine and Russia. The plan, which would have leased Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula to Russia for decades, drew widespread criticism as being pro-Russia.
Artemenko featured prominently in a One America News episode about the Bidens and Ukraine. In it, he alleged that Ukrainian officials with allegations about the Bidens couldn’t get visas to come to the U.S. because of corruption at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.
“They serve to the Democrats,” he said of U.S. Embassy officials. “They serve to the Mr. Soros.” <...>
A search of corporate records under Andy Kuchma’s name indicated he is in business with Erik Prince, who founded Blackwater. A company registered in Florida called Airtrans LLC lists Kuchma as its executive chairman, and Artemenko’s wife Oksana as its president. The company’s website says it is part of Frontier Resource Group, which Prince helms.
Artemenko confirmed that he and Prince are in business.
“We are working together,” he said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/10/ukrainian-giuliani-ally-lobby-trump-administration-179453

Here's Artemenko (aka Kuchma) tweeting out a LinkedIn post by Erik Prince touting Ukrainian aircraft available for urgent air medical sourcing and delivery logistics (# coronavirus) pic.twitter.com/1oJrOzgf56
- Wendy Siegelman (@WendySiegelman) April 11, 2020

Принса интересуют не столько самолеты, сколько частные армии наемников. В этом деле он готов сотрудничать с коллегами из группировки Вагнера, невзирая на американские санкции.

After Wagner lost more than a dozen fighters in Mozambique, Prince sent a proposal to the Russian firm offering to supply a ground force as well as aviation-based surveillance, according to documents viewed by The Intercept and a person familiar with Prince’s proposal.
https://theintercept.com/2020/04/13/erik-prince-russia-mercenary-wagner-libya-mozambique/



Благодаря бестолковой политике Вашингтона, Путин сумел вклиниться в конфликты в Ливии и Мозамбике, послав пушечное мясо "Вагнера" и кибертроллей Пригожина сражаться в ливийской гражданской войне на стороне маршала Хафтара.

A former Libyan Army general and onetime C.I.A. client, Mr. Hifter wanted a White House blessing for a surprise attack to seize Tripoli, the capital, before the peace talks commenced.
Mr. Bolton did not say no.
The attack, launched last April 4, backfired badly. Mr. Hifter failed to capture Tripoli, overextended his forces and restarted a civil war - killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands more. The fighting has cut off the flow of Libyan oil, injected new volatility into the region and severely diminished Washington’s influence.
But one apparent winner has emerged: the Kremlin. Russia has operated with cold-eyed cynicism, taking advantage of three years of muddled messages from the Trump administration to become a critical kingmaker in Libya, a geopolitical prize with vast energy reserves and a strategic location on the Mediterranean.
Mr. Bolton’s call with Mr. Hifter - described by a former senior administration official as well as three Western diplomats briefed by both Mr. Hifter and American officials - appears to have played into the Russian machinations. <...>
An arm of the Kremlin controls dozens of social media accounts promoting Mr. Hifter and other favored clients, including the eldest son of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s former dictator, according to the operatives’ report. The same Kremlin operation has acquired an ownership stake in a pro-Qaddafi Libyan satellite network and advised a pro-Hifter network as well, the operatives wrote.
At the same time, the Russian military has worked behind the scenes to surround Mr. Hifter with many of its old partners from the Qaddafi-era security forces, encouraging Qaddafi henchmen to return from exile. The Kremlin also has built ties to a potential governing party-in-waiting, the documents show.
And the Kremlin followed the operatives’ prescient advice. When Mr. Hifter’s assault stalled, Moscow propped up his sagging advance with thousands of trained mercenaries who continue to operate in Libya.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/world/middleeast/libya-russia-john-bolton.html



В отличие от бедной на нефть Сирии, Ливия входит в десятку стран с самыми большими нефтяными запасами в мире и обладает крупнейшими месторождениями в Африке.

According to the Oil & Gas Journal (OGJ), Libya had proved crude oil reserves of 48 billion barrels as of the end of 2014-the largest endowment in Africa, accounting for 38% for the continent’s total, and the ninth-largest amount globally.
https://www.eia.gov/international/analysis/country/LBY

Контроль над Ливией, который ныне находится на расстоянии протянутой руки - это еще и доступ к "мягкому подбрюшью" Европы, из которого Европу можно наводнять беженцами, провоцируя ксенофобную истерику и расшатывая европейское единство.



На горизонте замаячила заветная мечта про Ялту-2.0.

"На предлагаемой нами встрече на высшем уровне пяти государств-постоянных членов Совета Безопасности ООН их лидеры, рассматривая вопросы стратегической стабильности и безопасности, неизбежно затронут и проблемы, касающиеся дальнейшего функционирования и роли многосторонних институтов."
https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4099053